Customer-facing staff do not have all the information they need, according to research

The IT systems of financial services companies in the UK are not focused enough on customer service, according to research by the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland and consultants Charteris.

Many organisations do not have access to a single, standard customer record, and customer-facing staff are not able to access all the information they need.

Many IT systems do not enable data to be shared between isolated stores of information, says the research.

"Many do not have an open flexible IT infrastructure that enables services to be used across multiple channels and data to be routed to the right place - the challenge is to be come more agile," it says.

Legacy systems are not integrated in many firms and there is over reliance on manual processes.

Some financial services firms are finding it so hard to access data and keep it updated that they have concerns over the accuracy of historical customer information.

If banks want to cross-sell products and target services more effectively, they need to improve the integration of their IT systems, says the report.